Louis Pfeifer 1895 - 1945

Born 8.1.1895 in Bad Marienberg
Died 20.2.1945 in Mauthausen

Biography

Louis Pfeifer was the son of Wilhelm and Pauline Pfeifer, a long-established family in Bad Marienberg/Westerwald.

He served in the First World War as a marine. Afterwards he worked as an engraver. During this period Louis Pfeifer became a committed follower of the Bible Students [later known as Jehovah’s Witnesses]. From 1921 to 1934 he worked in the German central office of the Bible Students in Magdeburg. Due to the onset of persecution of Bible Students by the Nazi regime, the institution was disbanded and broken up. Louis Pfeifer attempted to reach what was then Czechoslovakia. As an ‘unwanted German’ he was denied entry. He therefore returned to Zinhain near Marienberg, supported the local Bible Students group there and earned his living as a travelling salesman of haberdashery.

Louis Pfeifer was arrested in October 1936 by the Gestapo in Liebenscheid in the Upper Westerwald. He was taken to Frankfurt-Preungesheim jail, where he was tortured for the first time. He was sentenced in a trial against a group of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Frankfurt. At the start of 1939 he was transferred to Buchenwald concentration camp, which was then under construction. He was given prisoner number 1105. He remained there for five years, including time spent having to work in the quarry.

On 2 February 1944 Louis Pfeifer was transferred to the Lublin-Majdanek concentration camp. The swift advance of the SS forced the SS to clear the Majdanek concentration camp as quickly as possible and it was disbanded on 23 July 1944. The closure of the camp necessitated the evacuation of the prisoners. Pfeifer was sent to various transit camps. Finally Louis Pfeifer was transported to Mauthausen in an open goods wagon.

As a fellow prisoner reported at the end of the war, this transport, coming from Auschwitz, arrived in Mauthausen on 25 January 1945. On the stony path from the station to the Mauthausen concentration camp, Louis Pfeifer collapsed from utter exhaustion. He only reached the camp with the help of his comrades. There he was registered under prisoner number 118178. Due to his poor state of health he was sent to the infirmary camp, which meant being separated from his group of fellow believers.

Due as well to the terrible conditions that prevailed there, Louis Pfeifer died on 20 February 1945 at the age of 50 after a total of more than eight years of imprisonment.

His name was recorded in the death register of the Mauthausen concentration camp for the year 1945 under number 1583.

During his imprisonment Louis Pfeifer had only limited contact with his relatives. These letters were censored and contained the messages: ‘I am healthy’ and ‘I am fine’.

Jehovah’s Witnesses were the only group of prisoners to be offered the possibility of being released from a concentration camp if they signed a document renouncing their membership of the ‘International Bible Students Association’. Only a few signed the declaration.

 

Ulrike Springer

Translation into English: Joanna White

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